excuses her from the massive lying fraud she has perpetrated.

Obviously it affected her mentally.

Sorry

Sorry.

I'll admit I haven't followed every twist of the story, so I may have missed something major, but ...

From what I'm aware of, she was apparently trying to contribute toward civil rights efforts.

Yes, if her claims of "death threats" or whatever were fake, and some other claims fake, she may have wasted taxpayer dollars and maybe other people's dollars in various lawsuits etc. However to my knowledge it hasn't been proven that anything was fake; they just weren't substantiated. (How many other victims' claims have been unsubstantiated ... doesn't always mean something didn't happen).

Yes I get that she had no right to claim a racial heritage that she truly doesn't have.

Yes she seems like she has some messed up perceptions and relationship with reality.

But I do think that the abuse certainly could explain some of the messed-up-ness.

And I haven't yet seen where she has actively sought to damage anyone - who she didn't perceive to have damaged her first - and I haven't seen where she actually personally damaged anyone outside her personal circle (birth family, ex-husband) - and I haven't seen where she has publicly produced and aired propaganda that, say, glorifies and promotes domestic violence. But while that last is easily shrugged off by the majority at DU (at least by fans of a particular basketball team), suddenly this messed up person with every freakin' right to be a messed up person, based on what was done to her as a kid, is some kind of epitome of evil. THAT I just don't get.

ultimately taking the place of a legitimate African American student.
Much of her work is suspected /proven to be plagiarized.
She is / has set back the mission of the NAACP by all of the bs distraction.
She has tried to use her proclaimed race / parentage to get out of traffic tickets / legal trouble (very Alice in Wonderland, that).

Yeah, she's done a shit ton of damage IMHO. It's just now being uncovered.

She identified with the siblings her parents were most abusing. Who could blame her for that?

This is a progressive website, we dont go around and cast massive judgements on people who are abused and mentally troubled, we're not saying it "excuses" but we're not here to damn people like we're christian right wing evangelicals

maybe you can, where's the proof that she was abused?

Other than to feel smug about yourself...

I think some allowance should be made for her childhood of abuse. Good for her that she identified more with her abused siblings than with her creepy parents.

I mean that's what she did and she did it on a massive scale for years and years.

But yes, there are much worse crimes. That fact doesn't make her not a massive lying fraud.

when you disagree with what someone did, to separate what they did from who they are. She has made some unhealthy choices, but people with a history of abuse sometimes do come at things from an unhealthy angle and make bad choices.

Her famliy does sound like it was a mess, and I question why her parents talked to the press instead of privately contacting those people she was lying to. It sounds like an attempt to control and humiliate.

I also wonder why this is still a news story. I think it was interesting from a sociological standpoint, but it seemed like a brief news blip more than an ongoing story.

So I guess I am OK with criticizing what she did, but I don't want her destroyed by this, and maybe that's what her parents are going for.

Her parents are trying to shame her.

Whether she was abused or not, she is a fraud. There are many who have been horribly abused and they rise above and lead lives not based on lies but lives based on integrity.

somehow I think most liberals can muster some empathy for the underprivileged and abused even when it leads to poor decision making.

I have only seen spurious speculation she was abused, nothing else. I have, however, seen actual evidence of the various frauds she has perpetrated.

I have empathy for abuse survivors, I have seen nothing other than speculation and hearsay on the subject of her being an abuse survivor.

So far, there are only unsubstiated allegations, while there is solid proof of her serial lying.
My empathy lies with the victims of her lies, she made her bed, now she has to lie in it.

She's lied about so much, to so many people, nothing she says can be trusted.

Would anyone here trust Bill O'Reilly if he said he had been abused?

it must be true?

Like this was true?

An allegation is not a conviction, of course.

There is clearly two very different version of events in this family, with the parents accusing Esther of being mentally ill.

These are parents that believe in a creationist version of the world, and are very conservative Christians.

Much of this story is not known.

Joshua's older sister.

Which would be Rachel.

http://www.buzzfeed.com/tasneemnashrulla/rachel-dolezals-brother-wrote-about-her-ex-husband-allegedly#.wxQY4bXEr3

Recommended.

Her family of origin appears to have been defined by pathology.

I can't hate the woman as she appears to be really mentally fragile. For her parents to out her like this speaks more about them than it does about her. Her whole family seems to be taking glee in taking her down.

From the first time I saw the parents on tv, I knew exactly what they were doing. IMO, it lends credibility to the abuse claim.

According to the media you are.

Judge tosses charges against former Lincoln County official

Rachel's adopted sister Esther had a criminal complaint against brother Joshua for sexual abuse.


http://www.buzzfeed.com/davidmack/dolezal-alleged-abuse-scandal#.svrwLBOBbk

Race, sex, and judging your neighbor... a perfect trifecta of titillating distracting gossip!

The first I heard this story I knew there were some horrible skeletons in the Dolezal's family closet.

Fundamentalists like Rachel Dolezal's parents do terrible damage to their children.

My sister is a diagnosed pathological liar and her condition stems from abuse as well. As soon as I read the story and saw her interview she reminded me of my sister.

Especially the lying about racially based hate crimes to garner sympathy for herself.

Some of Dolezal's statements and actions combined with the rigid fundy family background set off alarm bells.

This is a very intelligent, accomplished woman with demons haunting her. There is no excusing her charade as a black person because she benefited professionally from it. I hope the hell she seeks counseling and learns better tools for coping with her past. She's still a young woman after all.

What she's not is "transracial."

I think you said this perfectly.

That is not something that is done lightly or easily.

are mind boggling.

Why?

It's an ugly situation, but nowhere near "black or white." Life is complicated, abused people do peculiar, sometimes damaging, and sometimes selfish things.

Fuck the finger waggers.

People with personal connections to the situation don't seem too upset and are able to talk about it with some nuance.

and the reports of her childhood abuse could explain a lot.

It doesn't excuse it and she should own up to it.

Even if there was some family quarrel going on, I thought, this is atrocious behavior by the parents. What cold-ass jerks they must be!

If this was YOUR child, would you treat her this way? We're talking parent-child, not sibling-sibling, not friend-friend, not co-worker-co-worker, not ordinary citizen vs popular leader. Her PARENTS!

There are so many loving, humane ways that her PARENTS could have dealt with it--if it needed to be dealt with.

Nope, something wrong here.

As the story grew, I became more and more convinced that something is very wrong with this story--and the wrongness is in the parents, not the child. Further, I wondered why everybody was so down on this poor woman who obviously has a very serious emotional problem--a desperate need to be perceived as other than what she is? To be perceived as a victim of slavery and segregation?

I thought, this is a case of emotional trauma of some kind. The woman is not lying; she is in trouble, disturbed, in need of help.

There was one interpretation of the parents' action that could be construed as at least intending good--maybe they felt that she needed a cold-ass intervention in order to GET help. But my overall feeling about it was not this. Good was not intended. Harm was intended.

This OP seems to confirm that intuition. It is too informal, as accusations, right now. This needs far more investigation. But I have to say that, if true--or even partly true--it goes some way to explain how and why Rachel Dolezal became so mixed up about her identity.

I read somewhere else that the children whom the Dolezal's adopted were African-American. If the OP is true, then that would further explain how she became African-American in her mind--i.e., if she was forced to inflict corporeal punishment on adopted African-American children. She ended up strongly identifying with the victims--so strongly that she couldn't tolerate her identify as a white any longer.

We really, really, REALLY need to learn to QUESTION Corporate news stories--question them fundamentally, question every premise as well as every detail, along with questioning their editorial decisions about what IS a story and what sort of attention to give it. I've learned to do this about political and economic issues, and foreign policy and war issues, but I've only just begun to learn it on "distraction" stories. I don't have TV so I'm not so bombarded with stupid Corporate 'news' distractions.

This is more than a distraction, though. This seems to be gratuitous destruction of a person, without investigating the source of information. This would not have been a news story at all, but for the parents. It SHOULD HAVE BEEN a quiet word to a few people and maybe a quiet resignation, or, better yet, forgiveness and an offer of psychiatric help. Instead, the parents were permitted to knife their daughter on all 'news' channels, and walk away untouched.

In itself, that ain't pretty but it might qualify as news (parents knife daughter, metaphorically, in front of dozens of news cameras). Where Corporate News failed was in not asking--and not investigating--what was going on in this family to produce such a wounded daughter of cruel parents. If the OP is true, they entirely mis-reported this story, due to lack of investigation. But even if the OP is not true, they should have asked and tried to answer this question: Is this a case of serious emotional disturbance, and NOT one of (relatively harmless) lying and deceit, or not PRIMARILY one of (relatively harmless) lying and deceit?

might have just pushed them over the edge.

I know it would have me and my husband.

None of us know the family situation and what may have gone on over the years in terms of an intervention on their part. It could very likely be that this was an intervention of last resort...to finally get her to realize she is living a lie and needs help.

It really bothers me the way it seems people are after her like a pack of wolves, when there are FAR more evil things and people guiltier of far more serious crimes in this world that we should be paying attention to.

It's almost like someone said "hey look! Look - over there!"

Finally, DUers with insightful and compassionate posts.
Thank you.

I don't understand the harsh judgment of Rachel when there is obviously more to her story than meets eye.

Anonymous sources from an unknown source that seems to be biased isn't enough for me to take on faith.

of Rachel's adopted black sister is substantiated with court documents.

I assume you understand the difference.

Why would parents knife their daughter in public like this?
Why would their daughter be emotionally convinced that she is black?

The OP's assertion that she was seriously abused and forced to inflict capital punishment on adopted siblings--and especially as those siblings are apparently black--answers both questions. The parents could be covering up abuse. The daughter could be struggling with great emotional harm inflicted by them. (Note the reason that xian extremists, who believe in beating children, get siblings to do the violence in their stead: this makes it more difficult to prosecute them for abuse.)

I don't take these accusations on faith, and I said as much. But they DO help to make sense of the story--a story that has puzzled me from the beginning, especially on those two important points: why would they do this? and, why does she feel the way she feels?

It needs more investigation, for sure.

I don't know that she was around much for their childhoods. Look at how young all the kids were in her wedding photos. Hard to believe she would have been around to participate in their abuse.

And her parents kept quiet foe well over ten years. It seems they only went public when the media sought them out with her statement that they were not her parents. If they were so vindictive, they could have anonymously blown her cover years ago.

The whole thing is sad, IMO.

She is responsible for her actions, not her parents, not Christian Liberty Academy. Dolezal is a smart woman and is now trying to convince all of us that her explanation of "transracial" is legitimate. It isn't because race is a social construct - there is no such thing. But that isn't going to stop her from capitalizing on her pathology by doing talk shows, probably writing a book, and starring in her own reality show.

I don't hate her and I don't much care about who is at fault concerning personal family issues. It is clear the woman needs help and I hope she admits it and gets it. I'm not going to hold my breath though.

And that would help explain her behavior.

And race IS a social construct -- I have no idea how you can say "there is no such thing."

Sometimes great, amazing people come from horrible parents. But then sometimes bad parents end up having bad kids - the old adage "the apple doesn't fall far from the tree."

good work. Obviously, she did some things that were wrong. But her parents seem much worse than she does.

but I thought I read somewhere that she was telling people of color they weren't black or Latino or whatever enough. For a white woman pretending to be a person of color, that's really crappy.

But yes if her parents indeed were abusive, they were worse than she was.

I agree race IS a social construct. What I meant by "no such thing" is the made-up term transracial.

that she felt compelled to pretend to be an entirely different person. This makes sense to me.
Large numbers of children are abused. There is nothing implausible about that claim.

Dissociative Identity Disorder?

and the picture keeps getting more and more complicated.

It's above DU's pay grade, that's for sure.

Then again, the punitive contingent here are having a blast being self righteous.

I hope she gets the help she's obviously needed for years.

It appears that her upbringing may have caused her to identify with the siblings who were even more mistreated than she was.

Supposedly he made her to participate in a sex tape.
"Dolezal claimed she had suffered years of “physical, emotional, sexual and verbal abuse” at Moore’s hands. He has denied her allegations, the paper reported."
http://nypost.com/2015/06/17/dolezal-forced-to-make-sex-tape-with-ex/

I have been trying to tell these so called progressive people on this board for two days that Dolenzal did nothing wrong.She has every right to liver her life any way she chooses. We are all multi racial after nearly 400 million years of interbreeding. I am shocked by the attacks upon an innocent person. A responsible person. So many quick to judge. I watched her on NBC yesterday and formed my opinion based on her own testimony. I felt that she was being who she was. She does not owe anyone an explanation for anything. She is good at her job too.
Earlier today I was reported for abuse because some jerk did not agree with me. I used the Caitlin Kardashian example to ask where the line is drawn. I am now a victim of censure ship.

if you had a post hidden here.

Rachel Dolezal violated ethics rules, Spokane lawmaker says

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Former Washington state NAACP leader Rachel Dolezal, who drew national attention after being accused of lying about her racial background, has violated ethics rules while heading a police oversight commission, a senior city official said on Wednesday.

Investigators hired by the city of Spokane to probe a whistleblower complaint found Dolezal had publicly named citizens who made complaints against police officers, in violation of confidentiality rules, City Council President Ben Stuckart said.

"There were multiple occasions at open public meetings, that were recorded, where names of complainants were discussed in the open and they should have been confidential," Stuckart said, calling on her to resign from the commission.

In addition to the confidentiality issues, the probe found Dolezal engaged in workplace harassment as head of the Office of Police Ombudsman Commission, Stuckart said, without elaborating.

http://news.yahoo.com/former-naacp-leader-dolezal-found-violated-ethics-rules-181815292.html

Thanks for that link. I hadn't seen that before. I think this is a fascinating story.

Note how many, probably with quite good intentions, want to explain away all her actions. I think she has hurt people. A lot of people.

and is continuing her fraudulent actions with NO regard for others, none at all.

Why there is this compulsive need to find a way to minimize her actions is both puzzling and frustrating to me.

whether this desire to minimize or explain away her actions is partly because people might relate to her because she is white.

I don't really have a huge problem with people trying to understand or have sympathy for other people.

But then I'm becoming more and more of a prison abolitionist except for the really big financial type crimes and super violent crimes.

I do feel that if the criminal justice system found as many excuses or attempts to explain each defendant's behavior as we have on this thread for Rachel, we'd have about one tenth the number of people in prison that we do now.

The incarceration rates in this country are ridiculous and racist, driven largely by the for-profit model, imo.

I'd like to see more financial fraudsters in prison, and violent or incurable criminals. I think we should release all of the nonviolent drug offenders.

and sympathy in this case may be sadly misplaced.

As to the criminal justice system, it has always been really a legal system lacking justice. It depends on who you know, how much money you have and the color of your skin as to whether there is even a pretense of 'justice'.

I don't think excuses or attempts to explain a defendants behavior is so much needed but more fairness, the punishment fitting the crime.

Prisons being privatized has exacerbated an already corrupt and broken system.

I'm very interested in prison reform at every level: local, state and federal.

She had such ethnic identity dysmorphia. She must have identified with POC party to be different from her original family and because of the sense empathy for cultural oppression. I hope she is understood and forgiven for her misguided conduct. Poor thing.

Hatred and shame for her despicable white family members coupled with extreme empathy for her black siblings. I feel bad for her, too.

you're so sure that the parents were abusive, but where's you proof that they were?
Fact is that everyone here is just speculating, so far, there's no proof, other than allegations, that these despicable white family members, your words, were in any way, abusive.

to prove. Children make terrible witnesses.

From the article:
"We have also heard testimonies from numerous homeschool alumni who grew up knowing the Dolezal family that frequent and significant child abuse occurred in the family."

As you know, nobody will ever be able to PROVE it. Believe what/who you find credible and I'll do the same.

Just allegations, which, so far, are unsubstantiated, meanwhile, there is positive proof that this woman is a pathological liar.
Whom to believe?

is no proof, then, yes, no proof.

have to do with the child abuse? ?

Sorry, will delete.
But the point is that witnesses have been known to be wrong.

I leave you this

unreported and unprosecuted because children aren't good witnesses against their parents or other loved ones. Those cases are extreme outliers.

If there not reported, then how do you know there are hundreds?

Ask any social worker how diffcult these things are to document when the abuse is mainly psychological.

which is what this woman is, she's lied just about every aspect of her life, her lies have hurt other people, and people here are trying to excuse her lies by blaming the parents of abuse, of which there is no tangible evidence.

who have they hurt? And what "tangible evidence" do you have?


Look, I've a mixed race friend who "passes" for "pure" caucasian. She's very pretty, married to an AA man with two gorgeous light brown skin little boys. When we first met she told me she was married to a black man. I thought she was white, her old employer thought she was white. My husband kept telling me she was mixed (part AA), so one day curiosity got the best of me and I got up the courage to ask, and she told me that the last person in her family whom she knew could not pass for caucasian was her grandmother. The only difference that her passing made was that it was easier for her to get jobs in this racist country. Did she hurt anyone? Not by my standards! I've no hostility toward her or her little ruse whatsoever. By your standards, perhaps she's a charlatan too?


From Bill Nye, "the Science Guy":

I'm through with you, with your hostility, your lack of compassion, your lack of understanding, and your punitive nature. It's my opinion that you're posting on the wrong forum.

by the author with an obvious agenda. There is not one single scintilla of evidence that a single one of these alleged witnesses even exist. If even a one of them actually existed then where is there any evidence whatsoever of who they are and what they said? That's how normal journalism is done... if even a single witness exists then produce who they are and what they said, and if they wish to remain anonymous then produce information that shows they are an actual witness and provide information as to how they are credible and what information about any alleged abuse was witnessed, what it was, the frequency of incidents, what sort of incidents, etc. There is not one single iota of any of that in this article which makes it utterly crap journalism as well as vicious since it claims violence to children by specific individuals.

The only people that believe such crap journalism and utterly unsubstantiated allegations are just using it to attempt to further the same agenda. This article is flat out rubbish given its obvious agenda and ridiculously unsubstantiated claims and should be ignored for that very reason.

Further, most of the siblings have already gone on record personally claiming there was no abuse whatsoever by the parents to any of the children. This article is a flat out hit piece, and anyone taking such outrageous utterly unsubstantiated claims are just using it as sick fodder for the same agenda as the writer of it.

RD is a narcissistic and abusive pathological liar with REAMS of very substantiated evidence of it that HAS been substantiated much of it from her very own mouth. She's spent the entirety of her adult life constantly playing the victim for her own advancement and agenda and has continually made police reports of fake abuse and harassment, filed lawsuits against anyone that has pissed her off for any reason, blatantly plagiarized art work of others and sells it as original work for her own gain. etc., etc. and has USED the race of those who have ACTUALLY suffered from all manner of racism purely to further her own ends. She's a LIAR, a USER, an ABUSER and a CRIMINAL that is laughing all the way to the bank. Why anyone has once single drop of sympathy for her is a mystery and when she KNEW that latching on to the race of genuinely suffering people because of racism would generate sympathy for her despite the loooooong trail of evidence stacked against her.

her on TV. She seemed so mean-spirited.

She will never and I mean never be a black women .

She can do change her hairstyle ,create fake stories about her life but she is not a black woman

She is a fraud who is now being offered from reality tv show! so now she is likely to profit from her faking to be black well ain't that swell.

When black women are taunted by society and pushed into a corner where are these defenders of Rachel ?

Being black is not reading a few books and putting on a get up

What make my blood boil is that so called allies rushing to her defense and making excuses on her reasons why she did it

She has nothing to offer !

One min she sues Howard University on racial discrimination as a white women next she transforms to a black woman give me a break

because it doesn't excuse her. It might explain why she makes such bad choices, if she comes from horrible parents. Some people come from situations like that and become wonderful people, but sometimes bad parents have bad kids.

on this thread, she's still a serial liar. I think she has hurt people.

I wish our criminal justice system was as willing to explain or sympathize with people's backgrounds.

We'd probably have half the number of people incarcerated that we do now.